


The World Belongs to You

by 1848



Series: EASTERN PROMISES, a mafia AU series [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: An EASTERN PROMISES Mafia AU Series, F/M, Gen, M/M, Mafia AU, Multi, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-07 05:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13428213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1848/pseuds/1848
Summary: “If the serial killer gets us, he gets us,” confesses the roadside hooker. “I had a vision of the Orient,” prays the inmate. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” reads the suicide note left in the motel wastebasket.「A series of portraits from yosb’s EASTERN PROMISES mafia au.」





	1. The Girl at Sha Tin Race Track

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [#aph mafia fam au](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/352362) by yosb. 



> An attempt to put flesh on skeleton. Non-chronological updates.

The first time he sees her, it is at Sha Tin race track. He is not yet ten.

The story goes: she will not see him for the first time until much, _much_ later.

Kar-loon has spent the greater portion of the day cocooned in a private room reserved by his father. The private owners box, offset from the main grandstand ballroom, holds not quite twenty guests between the two dining tables. They are delighted, attending on behalf of his father’s personal invitation.

His mother is absent. _Probably smoking_ , Kar-loon thinks. In the bathroom. She does not bother to hide these open secrets (she often leaves ash and cigarette butts floating in the bowl). The smell that clings to her never bothers Kar-loon, but the smoke reminds him of a time long before horse races. It reminds him of being small and clumsy.

It is this memory of cigarettes that causes him to cough.

This prompts his father, seated by the window overlooking the track, to open his arms. Kar-loon accepts the invitation to settle in his lap. His father pats him on the back immediately, trying to dispel the phantom coughs. As his coughs are psychosomatic, so his father’s motions are automatic. A father’s love is unconditional.

His father owns a horse in today’s race.

It is the reason for the unremarkable bodies idly picking at the Chinese appetizers. It is the reason his mother is in the bathroom. It should be the reason his father is keeping his eyes trackside. It is not.

His father directs his gaze now towards the main balcony.

Kar-loon sees her for the first time. The girl at Sha Tin race track.

She is not supposed to be there. Kar-loon may not know all the owners’ children, but he has spent what little life he has in the ellipses. There are people who skirt, who waver, in the sanctity of the margins. It is the family business to hedge bets on peripheral strangers. Like his mother’s men of wheat, rye, and barley, this girl, Kar-loon knows, is not supposed to be there.

She is not supposed to be _here_.

(She is not dressed prettily like his mother -- his mother, who had come irate; had arrived with loud jade and angry crimson; daring his father to even look at her. She delivered Kar-loon into his keeping before disappearing to the bathroom stalls with a smartly dressed guest.)

Kar-loon looks back at his father. There is a twinkle in his eye. _This is important_ , he doesn’t say. _You must remember this_.

“ _Wang Jia Long. Come here_.” His mother is back, calling at him in pitched Shanghainese from the hall beyond the door. She is the only one of them who can speak the dialect. It is meant to prove something to the Cantonese-speaking guests of his father. It is meant to punish him.

She is punishing Honda-san for bringing her here, dragging her into his realm of smartly dressed men and women. She is punishing him for reminding her that she cannot return to the public betting halls of her youth. She misses the canteens of half-dressed alcoholics; the throngs of rolled-up newspapers, pocketed slips, and dirt-grubbed fingernails.

There is a pause, a reconsideration. “ _Jiao Bentian Xiansheng ye lai_.”

(Shanghainese, still.)

The name -- _Bentian Xiansheng_ \-- reminds Kar-loon. Despite what they have, Honda Kiku is not his father. The playing-at-betrothal is a ritual pretense the three of them have lapsed into out of familiarity. There is no ring, there is no marriage, there was no conception. There is only words and trust, perhaps, where others would call an eager blindness.

The ritual is disrupted each time one of his mother’s silver flaxen suiters with a nose too tall grows too bold. There will be a fight. They will not speak to each other for a few days. Then, slowly, it thaws. His mother chooses stability every time.

She is not reckless enough to choose otherwise.

The guests are unaware of the standoff. As Kar-loon gets up, Kiku takes his hand, excusing both of them from a dormant audience. Kiku’s hands have always been firm but soft. Kar-loon remembers being guided by these precise hands as a small child; they have been there to wash pebbles of rice away and to return crinkled paper balloons into his palms. It is the only home he has ever known.

His mother’s palms have always been calloused. He wonders if it bothers her that his father has pretty hands.

After they slip into the hallway, his mother pats the chest of the spectacled man next to her, the one she had slipped away with. “He wants to know about your cut,” she suggests to Kiku in Mandarin. They are conspirators.

Kar-loon knows how this story goes: he bids this _gege_ _hao_ and is returned with warm Cantonese indulgences. The man evaluates him with an affection that reminds him of his mother’s.

Kar-loon only realizes he has been holding tightly to Kiku when the stranger gifts him a tin of milk candy. The man bids him well ( _“How are you taking to Hong Kong? I can’t believe it’s only been a few months. You have grown so big... An old friend's son...”_ ) before turning his focus to Kiku. The two chat tersely in a language Kar-loon does not bother to register.

The man invites Kiku to join him on a walk around the Parade Ring. Kiku’s guests will have to be disappointed by his unavailability.

In the wake of Kiku’s absence, it dawns on Kar-loon that his mother does not have the sole monopoly on secrets.

The guests are delighted by the racing results broadcast on the television screens. They summon Kar-loon’s mother from the doorframe. She motions for him to return to the owner box. He hurries back to the vast emptiness of Kiku’s wing chair.

“Miss Wang -- come, come, come,” a guest waves. “Who is that riding _Eastern Promises_?”

“Yes,” another hisses in delight, “these female jockeys Mr. Honda finds are exceptional.”

“You must tell us his secrets. This is brilliant.”

Kar-loon unwraps a nougat candy. He looks for the smartly dressed girl through the glass.

She is gone.

“My husband,” Wang Yi muses to these guests of his, “has a menacing affinity for the horse girls at Sha Tin.”

At these races, Kar-loon learns, there are prizes to be won.


	2. A Reassuring Read of a Reykjavík Rendezvous Regardless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter could not have existed without John Stilgoe.

It was like this that Clark Garland found himself with a Víking Gylltur in the middle of Reykjavík. Somehow, his flight to Heathrow had been booked, approved, and assigned without a single supervisor or auditor noticing the day-long layover in Iceland. Both sides of the Atlantic had rubber-stamp approved this fuck-up.  _Fuckin budget cuts_ , Clark had quipped to himself at the check-in counter, astonished.

So, with the restless desire to get a feel of something besides Keflavík terminals, he had grabbed his duffle bag from baggage claim and navigated out. By the time Clark had shuttled into the city center, the weather had ruptured into a violent overcast. Immediately, he had set upon finding an empty bar to duck into. It was luck that Clark had found one tailing the downward slope of a shy residential alley. It had been deceptively concealed at the bottom of a set off stairs, siphoned off from the ground-level of the pedestrian road. He had shoved his bag by the door and asked for their most popular Icelandic beer.

He took a breath.

The people who survive shipwrecks are those who have done their rounds; they have pinpointed the lifeboats before the vessel even takes on water.

Clark took another breath.

The door had opened outwards. When the wind picked up, the door had demanded an aggressive barge to unloose. That this selective barrier was a deterrent to the weary tourist made it all the more a welcome shelter for Clark.

There hadn’t been a vestibule set aside for the door. When the entrance opened, a breeze — dulled by the underground entrance — fired straight through the bar counter like a shotgun shack. Clark would sense the door opening before he cognitively registered it.

The door had opened outwards. You couldn’t barricade it against intruders.

Suddenly, the wind tousled at Clark’s neck. He took another breath through closed eyes. _Speaking of intruders._

The footsteps were lighter than his. _Smaller._ He remembered how the wooden handle had been built all too large for a woman’s grip. _Man_. There was pausing and scuffling as the footsteps crossed the frame to enter the bar, enough for Clark to discriminate. _Not man_ , he revised. _Men_.

Satisfied with his guesswork, Clark turned for visual confirmation. Two men. Moreover, two men who didn’t seem to particularly take to one another. One was newly agitated, the other, tailing him, dangerously relaxed. _Snowball’s chance in hell these two are friends_.  

The latter was almost definitely a cop. _Plainclothes cops tend to have the same posture around the world_. Clark gave it another go. _They're not friends. T_ _hey're colleagues. They’re both cops_.

He nodded to himself. The timing of his new job had shaken him; it had gone beyond that even: it had completely uprooted him. _I had to go East._  

It reassured him that he managed a read in Reykjavík regardless. 

He had begun by reading actors on celluloid. After having earned his badge, he found a pliant audience in Chicago’s Koreatown gambling parlors. They had let him into their blackjack and poker games on the condition that he watch. Strictly off-duty. _Deal_. It had been the best training he had. It kept him sharp. You had to know who was going to fold and when. You had to know who was going to get out before the house was set on fire. You had to know who came with the kerosene and a match already lit.

An Army combat intelligence officer had tried to recruit him into the CIA. His answer had been easy, much easier than the temptation to cross the Atlantic. ' _I don’t do deskjobs.'_   

Moreover, there had been whispers. Clark had never forgotten the weekend lessons from Seoul Town. They had taught him survival. What had kept Clark alive was knowing when to duck. You had to lick your finger and test the current. You hauled your sweet ass out when the gale was blowing wrong.

Some higher power had whispered for Clark to buck out of the South. So, East he went with a layover in Reykjavík.

One of the cops slid into the chair beside him at the bar in Reykjavík. His companion eased into the next seat over. Clark knew within an instant: _This fucker’s going to talk to me._

Two cops walk into a bar. _What a fuckin joke._

“You don’t come around often, do you?” A gimmick opener. _Easy on the eyes. G_ _ood cop_.

Something about the British accent had caught Clark off-guard. Of course the duo was foreign. What kind of local goes for an overpriced prix fixe in the mid-afternoon? Clark reconsidered the exclusivity of the bar: what kind of people did this place traffic in?

Even if this British expat was seeking camaraderie abroad, nothing about his own body posture was inviting. Everything about Clark had been self-reflexively folded in, collapsed. He had learned early in South Shore how intimidating his own immensity was. Deals didn’t get done when you kicked in the shower-room door naked waving a big stick and bigger dick.

British Cop disregarded Clark’s learned minimization. _British Cop looked interested in dick_. He leaned into Clark’s space. Clark could taste his breath.

“Layover,” he managed. 

“Us, too.” British Cop winked and tipped his head towards his partner, “Though he’s flying. I’m a privileged guest on his charter.”

“Look,” Clark demurred, uncomfortable. “I… have a wife.”

Not a complete lie. He had met her on the job. A state trooper. She had pulled him over in the furious process of writing him up before he managed to get a word in. They had talked about his Michelin tires. ‘I prefer to look at people’s tires.’ Their first date, they spent looking at tires.

“Really?” British Cop started, clearly unconvinced. “You want to rethink that?”

Clark offered a blank stare.

British Cop curled his lip. He pointed at Clark’s hand. Bored. “No ring?”

 _Fuck._ _Fucking cops_.

British Cop pantomimed a shrug, hands apologetically drawn up in a _no-harm-done_ concession, “Look, I get it. Men aren’t your thing. No foul in trying.”

His partner watched on, horrified, transfixed, amused. 

Clark cleared his throat. “Had a wife.”

Not a complete lie. _I left the woman I really loved to get involved with that bitch on the other side of the world._ It had cost him everything.

As all half-truths are, it felt inadequate. Clark extended the lie, “Kane.” He supplied his naked left hand in greeting.

British Cop nodded slowly and took the offer. Clark could tell he was trying to digest the information. _Had_ was good, _had_ was vague. _Had_ didn’t invite follow up.  

“Now what kind of a first or last name is Cain?”

“My surname. I don’t really like my given name.”

“Don’t have kids in Iceland then,” finally spoke the other stranger. 

It wasn’t British. It wasn’t native English. He couldn’t place it. It sounded hopelessly like a learned Transatlantic, as if he had been ingested and informed, too, by a cinematic vision projected at twenty-four frames per second.

He spoke out of time, and he… well, he looked out of this century. A Boschian paint chip flicked loose from the canvas... there was something maniacally vulgar about his features (peppered with malachite, ears a bright carmine). Clark had never ventured this far up north before; light had a different texture, a different tenor, an altogether different flavor up north. Was it just the Icelandic light? 

“Don’t worry about him. He’s a buddy,” British Cop bent inwards, making a grand gesture of some supposed shared secret. “Forget about him.”

Neither of them had even given their names back. _Not that I have any right to bitch_. He hadn’t been honest about his introduction.

“You,” Clark started at the him-he-was-to-forget, hand like a talon clasping the neck of his drink, “do I know you from somewhere?”

The stranger lifted an eyebrow. There had been a smirk on his face since British Cop’s overtures. It fit his features. It could’ve been mistaken for a sneer, but Clark knew the difference. He had attempted police sketches at his wife’s insistence only to confirm that he had no talent for producing them. He was an absolute amateur with a pencil, but the episode had given him an eye for nuance in evaluating composites. _Smirk_.

“Not if I’m doing my job right, Cain,” the smirking stranger suggested.

British Cop clicked his tongue. The coyness irritated him. He lolled his head back at Clark in a half-assed _forgive-this-fucker_ plea.

That weather vane in the back of Clark’s mind jostled. A soft whistle. _Oh._ _They were definitely cops._

He replayed their arrival. _Not locals, no, but regulars_. He had overlooked the easiness of their entrance. They had instinctively known the weight of the door, had casually thrown it open in one gallant swing. The pause, the confusion, the momentary lapse in footing, had been at his presence.

 _Regulars, you dipshit_. 

“Where are you headed?” purred Not-British Cop.

_What kind of place traffics with passerbys as regulars?_

“South,” Clark offered.

British Cop snorted, closing his eyes, “Oh, you’re trouble, you see. We shouldn’t be talking to you.”

Not-British nodded once, “Maybe we’ll see you down there. We’re leaving in a few hours. Just here for a bite,” he glanced down at his watch. Clark followed the tell.

 _I know that fuckin watch_. The brand itself was unremarkable, but the collection an entirely different matter. Clark had known a shipwright — a buddy who had loaned him some scuba gear catalogues for a case — who owned this same model. It came with a Japanese manual and a steep price tag. It came with wind pressure and tidal changes. Clark himself had opted for a cheaper series, one that was slimmer and solar rather than quartz powered. The military in him had internalized discreteness over bulk.

_I could identify his body based on this watch._

This was a magnificent watch: the type you wanted twenty bars deep, the kind that accompanied you when you traveled in knots with just the heat and sea brine licking your neck. Civilians didn’t own these watches. _So, what we have here is a survivor_.

Clark finished the rest of his Víking, _or at the very least someone who plays at one._

“Christ, I’m starving. I’m getting puffin.” British Cop reclined back now, catching the eye of a waitress waiting in the hall, “Love, where’s Janus? Tell him I want the usual.” A quick interruption back to his colleague: “Reince, anything this time?”

‘Reince’ waved his hand without a glance.

 “Alright, yes, just the one for us then. And you,” British Cop fixed his attention back to Clark and his empty drink, “can I get you anything?”

“A name would be nice,” Clark faltered. This earned him a crooked smile from Reince.

“I don’t give my name on first dates. Or at the very least, no first names while sober.”

“Yes, he’s this much of a pain to travel with,” Reince offered. “Anywhere.”

“Even if I didn’t have a wife,” Clark gently reminded First Date, “you have a flight to catch in a few hours with your friend here.”

“You Americans are bloody delightful."

“You have a flight to catch, and coincidentally, so do I,” Clark began pulling out his wallet. British Date pursed his lips, tutted, and brushed his forearm.

“Let us take care of that,” he offered. “Now shoo. Off you go.” Clark looked over to Reince. _Business expenses,_ was the quirked mouth Reince offered back.

Eager to leave this bar ( _What kind of place traffics in the temporary?_ ), Clark thanked them and nodded at the bartender. He ambled out of his barstool, stopping briefly to collect his duffle bag tucked by the door. 

“I really hope this isn’t that last we see of you,” Reince smiled. “Enjoy London, Mr. Garland.”

Clark Garland froze, turning back. _The fuck did he know?_

“Oh please,” British Date squinted back at Clark. “How ignorant do you think we are?”

In a seamless motion, he extended his palm to the duffle hanging from Clark’s shoulder and continued, “Don’t keep your flight stubs attached to your luggage next time you decide to hold up an empty pub. What kind of rubbish airline are you flying that they forced you to check that in? Oh, come now, stop that wretched blushing.” 

 _Lock knees and fall out._ Clark managed a sheepish look back at the two.

“Fuck outta here, love. You’ll miss your fight,” yelped the British spitfire at Clark’s back.

* * *

“Fucking hell, I thought he’d never leave,” Eliot gasped, hand pinching the hinging of his bottom jaw.

“That was a curious coincidence,” Reinhold offered, before holding Eliot’s eye. “That was a coincidence, right? Three cops don’t just walk into a bar, do they? How small is this world? How small is Reykjavík?”

“Yes, it was a coincidence, you dim fuckwad. I don’t shit where I eat.”

“I thought we were walking into a set-up.” Reinhold’s hand waved in an arc, “Just like in the movies.”

Eliot tapped the bar with his knuckles, “Next time. I swear. Next time we do this, swear to God, you send your fucking brother. I don’t like being around you. You attract too much attention. He was eying you the entire time. I sincerely believe he wanted to fuck your face.”

This elicited a pregnant pause from Reinhold. “Klaus isn’t involved. Besides, I don’t run with the Slavs anymore.” He offered a cheeky smile, “Plus, if he was so busy face-fucking me, perhaps the great Clark Garland won’t remember your involvement in this sad tryst.”

“You, my sweet thing, better. _Fucking_. Hope. That. The next time. I cross paths with him, all he remembers is I was a slut,” Eliot retorted.

The uneasy silence was broken by the arrival of Janus's complimentary bread.

“One thing. _Reince_? Really, I mean, _Reince_?”


End file.
